


quarter turns on the golden ratio

by meredyd



Category: People Watching (2017), Subnormality (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Time Travel, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 02:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16525580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/pseuds/meredyd
Summary: or Four Times Mau and Safra Didn't Become Friends and One They Did“I guess it’s not really funny but I can imagine it so easily. All the times I went to that bar alone, and I was so fucking scared. I was terrified, you know that? As soon as you started being nice to me I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, and there was so many times I was almost so mean to you, or basically told you to bug off in a way that would have hurt my feelings for weeks if you were me! I’d probably still be agonizing over it now.”"Technically that did happen,” Mau says. “I think I’ve explained this a few times.”





	quarter turns on the golden ratio

**Author's Note:**

> You don't really need to watch any People Watching except this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb38t9ZnBhM to get the fic, although if you want more background on Safra or just watch it, I recommend it!

**I. (36)**  
She comes to the bar 45 minutes later than the appointed time, in a different coat. That’s the first thing Mau can detect, that and she looks like she’s running from something. The coat is green. Her coat is usually striped, mostly orange. This is entirely unexpected. Mau wonders, as she does every time, about the variables. Is the date wrong? That’s the most important, that’s obvious. Maybe they’ve hit a bump in reality, like a speed bump in a car. A pocket where everything is a little off, a little different. It happens sometimes, it’s not usually so obvious, and Mau can’t stop thinking of them as “them” after so many tries. 

It makes her laugh, because she remembers another Safra twenty loops ago telling her about a joke she didn’t understand. “You could make a religion out of that.” You could even make a museum out of that. You could, you could. 

Green Coat Safra sits down at the bar and looks lost, and doesn’t order food. She glares at Mau through the corner of her eye like an animal that’s trapped, and this time Mau has ordered two beers, she’s prepared, she has an entire speech about how she couldn’t finish both that she no longer cares if it sounds rehearsed or not. That’s the thing, you rehearse enough and none of it — Safra flinches as soon as Mau moves to slide one off the coaster. There’s a girl with pink hair and another with wild curls she can see gunning for some empty seats, and she gets up to move one over. What could it matter at this point?

“Don’t,” Safra says, harsh, almost but not quite cruel, “Okay? Just don’t. I don’t have time for this tonight. I only want to get drunk. I don’t want to talk to strangers, and I’m sorry if that’s rude, but I don’t know you and I don’t trust you and I don’t want to be here with you right now, or with myself, but I am here, so I paradoxically appreciate what I think you’re about to offer and I’m gonna take it, just to be a dick. Is that okay with you? God, I’m still apologizing.”

“For sure,” Mau says, and she swallows hard, which Safra sees, which makes her anger glaze over into a kind of visible wilted guilt. “I’ll leave you be.”

Mau doesn’t know what happened, and she never will. Ultimately, if this works, Safra will tell her.

She doesn’t bother introducing herself. 

**II. (24)**  
It’s going really well. This is, in fact, as good as it’s ever gone. Mau has made all the right choices this time. Safra is sparkling, something clicked early on in the conversation, one of those infinitesimal variables or else just Mau having already ordered and offered to share a basket of vegetarian poutine. You never can tell. Factors.

Safra is the one who brings it up first, in one fast burst of anxiety and buzz (it was the second drink maybe, that helped), “I don’t have a lot of friends, eh? Not anymore, not since school. I don’t really talk to people, not even on the internet, and nobody gets too worried about it, I go on dates, I go to work happy hours, but I’ve always kind of felt like I’ve been waiting to meet just that one person who’s worth being friends with, like that’s somehow more important or complicated even when you have a handle on the rest of it. But rejection hurts there more, you know? If I don’t want to have sex with someone - and no offense, you’re really cute, but that’s not how I’m feeling about this - if it’s just ‘here I am, you have to take my _whole_ personality with no buffer’ and who would want that - I don’t know, it’s fucked up, right?”

“I think most of the time,” Mau says, remembering too far back to account even to herself, “Most of the time it doesn’t even feel like it’s worth it. Like you only have enough left for you, and not for anybody else, not for showing them all the parts of you you think are bad or ugly or weird, but maybe the other person won’t think that. Maybe you don’t have to be perfect for everybody. Maybe the parts of you you think are that way are parts someone else thinks are just fine. Great, even. They’d want to be there for the bad stuff too then. Hypothetically.” 

Time hinges on this moment. The way Mau phrases it, the moment she interrupts, the exact look on Safra’s face, not asking right out if she wants to be friends, if a guy enters the bathroom behind them, if she’s holding a fry or not, if the fry has gravy on it. It all spins on this. They see each other, for the first time. 

One of two things happens. There are variations, of course, but it’s always a variation on one of the two.  
1\. Safra gets scared. Sometimes she gets mad.  
2\. Safra says, with a languid kindness Mau knows she keeps hidden with new people, “I guess that’s, kinda true,” and something shuttered in her eyes flips open. As if she is willing to risk a pain she is all too clearly aware is coming, regardless. 

It’s usually 1. Tonight, before Mau fucks it up at the dismount, it’s blissfully 2. 

**III. (75)**  
She won’t show up. You learn to study every timeline closely, every incident however small before the set date matters. And that’s all just context. And context means doing some research, going a bit past the bounds of the rulebook, all ancient newspapers and blogs and social media and knowing things you don’t want to know, things that might always be true.

It’s not the same in the future, where nobody really, truly ever dies, so Mau orders two beers anyway.

 **IV. (85)**  
“It’s so funny to think we almost didn’t become friends, right?”

“It’s not funny at all,” says Mau, whose quiet sincerity she knows has become charming. Who no longer worries about treading too softly with her own opinions. Time passes sequentially for the most part. Safra says she can’t imagine it, a world without days, moving through time like you're not even in it, but Mau knows they mean different things when they say that and that Safra can. 

“I guess it’s not really funny but I can imagine it so easily. All the times I went to that bar alone, and I was so fucking scared. I was terrified, you know that? As soon as you started being nice to me I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, and there was so many times I was almost so mean to you, or basically told you to bug off in a way that would have hurt my feelings for weeks if you were me! I’d probably still be agonizing over it now.”

“Technically that did happen,” Mau says. “I think I’ve explained this a few times.”

Safra slides her laptop into a bag, it rattles against an orange container of white tablets, some loose pens, a guitar pick. Mau has stopped looking at universal possibilities, after a while, but sometimes she can’t help herself. There’s at least one Christmas where Safra uses her bonus to purchase a guitar for herself, one where she buys it for her as a gift. 

Mau closes the door to the office behind her, and Safra shrugs on her green coat. “I still don’t totally get it. Or maybe I’m not meant to get it, because I’m just a normal boring human and not an space alien like you!” 

“Not everyone from the future is an alien,” Mau said. “And even if I was, you love aliens. As you said “all of that nerd shit.” That's the first thing you told me about yourself.

“I _do_ love nerd shit!” Safra cackles, leaning her head on Mau’s shoulder. “Time travel is nerd shit! Friendship is nerd shit! This job is probably nerd shit, if I’m honest. Nerd shit with bad hours, sorry for making you wait up so long.”

“That’s technically correct,” says Mau. “And it’s fine.” Everything about the past is fascinating, anyway. Today she ate three flavors of potato chips that don't exist in the 3050 and fed ducks in a lake. She’s grateful that Safra was from now, not any earlier, not any later. They walk the dark hallway outside into the cool October night. 

**V. (37)**  
Safra turns around, goes back through the door, the bells ring out and the other patrons look up but she’s running, somehow, faster than she knew she was capable of. She has to stop listening to that fucking mustache guy. Maybe there’s 1% battery. Maybe there's _factors_. Maybe she can’t laugh anymore. Maybe she isn’t ready, or it isn’t safe, or there’s really not enough and the empty box needs to stay empty for the pieces of her to move around and get through. All of that is true, maybe, but the world is lots of things. The world is more things than she can sometimes bear. 

“Hey, hey! Bartender dude! It’s me, you gave me the garbage plate! Thanks by the way, it was actually weirdly good. Did you see someone in here with white glasses and an ironic t-shirt, we were talking for a while but I know you weren’t really paying attention, their name was Mal, I think? Mow?” 

“Ran out right after you left. Looked pretty upset.” Safra feels the soft part inside of her calcifying rapidly. Her breath is coming in little bursts. 

“Yeah, she’ll come back again though, most people here get to be regulars, and I almost swore I saw her before. You okay?” 

“Uh, no,” Safra says. “No. But thanks.” 

**IV. (5)**  
Safra says, warm, happy, and Mau thinks _this is my best friend, maybe, just maybe_ , “So, where d'you want to go now?”


End file.
